cocked his jet eye
in its immaculate leer,
and as a coin,
tossed his destiny
Once a shy ivory boy,
the colour of life
had deepened on his cheek
in a wry irony
Pascin has ceased
to flush with ineffaceable bruises
his innubile Circes
Ceased to dangle
demi-rep angels
in tinsel bordels
Silence bleeds
from his slashed wrists
the dim homunculus
within
cries for the unbirth
The seeds
of his sly spirit
are cast to posterity
in satyric squander
a pigeon-toed populace
whose changeling women
jostle the prodigal son
as swine
Cinderellas awander.
IV
COMPENSATIONS OF POVERTY
(POEMS 1942–1949)
Loy in the 1950s
On Third Avenue
1
“You should have disappeared years ago”—
so disappear
on Third Avenue
to share the heedless incognito
of shuffling shadow-bodies
animate with frustration
whose silence’ only potence is
respiration
preceding the eroded bronze contours
of their other aromas
through the monstrous air
of this red-lit thoroughfare.
Here and there
saturnine
neon-signs
set afire
a feature
on their hueless overcast
of down-cast countenances.
For their ornateness
Time, the contortive tailor,
on and off,
clowned with sweat-sculptured cloth
to press
upon these irreparable dummies
an eerie undress
of mummies
half unwound.
2
Such are the compensations of poverty,
to see———
Like an electric fungus
sprung from its own effulgence
of intercircled jewellery
reflected on the pavement,
like a reliquary sedan-chair,
out of a legend, dumped there,
before a ten-cent Cinema,
a sugar-coated box-office
enjail a Goddess
aglitter, in her runt of a tower,
with ritual claustrophobia.
Such are compensations of poverty,
to see———
Transient in the dust,
the brilliancy
of a trolley
loaded with luminous busts;
lovely in anonymity
they vanish
with the mirage
of their passage.
Mass-Production on 14th Street
Ocean in flower
of closing hour
Pedestrian ocean
of whose undertow,
the rosy scissors of hosiery
snip space
to a triangular racing lace
in an iris circus of Industry.
As a commodious bee
the eye
gathers the infinite facets
of the unique unlikeness
of faces;
the diamond flesh of adolescence
sloping toward perception:
flower over flower,
corollas of complexion
craning from hanging-gardens
of the garment-worker.
All this Eros’ produce
dressed in audacious
fuschia,
orgies of orchid
or dented dandelion
among a foliage of mass-production:
carnations
tossed at a carnal caravan
for Carnevale.
The consumer,
the statue of a daisy in her hair
jostles her auxiliary creator
the sempstress—on her hip
a tulip—
horticulture
of her hand-labor.
From the conservatories of commerce’
long glass aisles,
idols of style
project a chic paralysis
through mirrored opals
imaging
the cyclamen and azure
of their mobile simulacra’s
tidal passing;
while an ironic
furrier, in the air,
combines the live and static
Femina
of the thoroughfare;
a windowed carousel
of girls revolving
idly in an unconcern
of walking dolls
letting their little wrists from under
the short furs of summer,
jolt to their robot turn.
Now, in the sedative descent of dusk
the street returns to stone;
alone
two lovers, crushed
together in their sweet conjecture
as to Fashion’s humour,
point at the ecru and ivory
replica of the dress she has on,
doused in a reservoir of ruby neon;
only — — her buttons are clothespins
the mannequin’s, harlequins.
Idiot Child on a Fire-Escape
Obedient as a bundle,
parked in your careful shawls,
you will not fall
into the exertions
of the earth under you,
having spilled,
on your way to becoming,
your skill in Being.
Sunlight excessively
illumines your deep eyelids
domed awnings
over the somnolent
reluctance of your sight—
inverted cups
of mortal ivory,
almost emptied.
Aid of the Madonna
Madonnas are everlastingly mothers in ecstacy.
Their alcove arms
retire the Felicity of their conception
from eld and the disorderliness
of peril,
reproving harm.
Madonnas are æon-moments of motherhood
—a moment is Time surrounded by itself—
in perpetuation of the beatitude,
their attitude
of smiling havens,
of sacred shelves.
Omitted omen of Calvary!
Uncarved Crucifixion!
Madonnas are islands in memory
for earthly mothers, who having begotten,
in early security, heroes of the skies,
on forsaken knees
crave for a moment it be forgotten
that skies once ovational
with celestial oboes
for the Heavenly Celebrities
are skies in clamour
of deathly celerities,
the horror
of diving obituaries
under flowers of fire.
Ephemerid
The Eternal is sustained by serial metamorphosis,
even so Beauty is
metamorphosis surprises!
Low in shadow
of the El’s
arboreal iron
some aerial, unbeknown
eerie-form
of dual mobility,
having long wing, an unbelievable
imp-fly
soars
trailing
a horizontal gauze;
trudges, urges,
crouches;
its knees’ apexes, a roach’s.
Humanly sized
a magnified imago
towing in
twofold progress
nameless nostalgia through slush,
enigma along gloom.
As always, has a wisp of whiteness loveliness
to lift the eyelids;
to whisper of subvisual resources
in the uncolor of the unknown.
Across indefinite curbstones
focus
this creature of fictitious
faery,
this eccentric of traffic:
after all
the illicit insect
is only
a little girl—
—a long white muslin curtain,
tied to her pull-over,
afloat from her,
she pilots an ideal load
taking a heavy child
for a ride
in a fragile,
stalling
doll’s perambulator.
The dilating wing
billows from her shoulders
the wondering of windows,
mildews, as the soul does,
penury
with dream.
Ponder this
metamorphosis:
Infancy’s
kidnap into Fantasia.
Chiffon Velours
She is sere.
Her features,
verging on a shriek
reviling age,
flee from death in odd directions
somehow retained by a web of wrinkles.
The site of vanished breasts
is marked by a safety-pin.
Rigid
at rest against the corner-stone
of a department store.
Hers alone to model
the last creation,
original design
of destitution.
Clothed in memorial scraps
skimpy even for a skeleton.
Trimmed with one sudden burst
of flowery cotton
half her black skirt
glows as a soiled mirror;
reflects the gutter—
a yard of chiffon velours.
Property of Pigeons
Pigeons doze,
or rouse
their striped crescendos
of grey rainbow
a living frieze on the shallow
sill of a factory window.
Pigeons arise,
alight
on vertical bases
of civic brick
whitened with avalanches
of their innocent excrements
as if an angel had been sick;
all that is shown to us
of bird-economies,
financeless,
inobvious as the disposal
of their corpses.
Pigeons make irritant, alluring
music;
quilled solfeggios
of shrill wings winnowing
their rejoicing, cooing
fanaticism for wooing.
Their dolce voices
dotage.
Too and fro, frowardly they live
burnishing each other’s
gorgeous halters
in the feathery drive
of preliminaries
to their marriages.
Pigeons disappear,
their claws, a coral landing-gear,
dive for the altar-stair
to their privacies—
a slice of concrete
fallen on a cornice
leading into darkness;
the slit adjacence of houses
where the caressive dusts,
the residue of furnaces
upholster the gossamer
festoons of intestate spiders
for nuptial furniture
Pigeons through some conjurous procedure
appear to reappear
upon the altar-stair
at startling instants
in the immature
torsos of their giant infants;
timid and unflown
stark of plume
naive in nativity
to peer into a vast transparency.
Photo After Pogrom
Arrangement by rage
of human rubble
the false-eternal statues of the slain
until they putrify.
Tossed on a pile of dead,
one woman,
her body hacked to utter beauty
oddly by murder,
attains the absolute smile
of dispossession:
the marble pause before the extinct haven
Death’s drear
erasure of fear,
the unassumed
composure
the purposeless peace
sealing the faces
of corpses—
Corpses are virgin.
Time-Bomb
The present moment
is an explosion ,
a scission
of past and future
leaving
those valorous disreputables ,
the ruins ,
sentinels
in an unknown dawn
strewn with prophecy .
Only the momentary
goggle of death
fixes the fugitive
momentum .
Omen of Victory
Women in uniform
relaxed for tea
under a shady garden tree
discover
a dove’s feather
fallen in the sugar.
Film-Face
As the Gods sat on Olympus
above travail of clouds
it dominates the garbage-barge
loaded with clouds
of sanitation’s chaos;
the enduring face of,
the ruined body of,
the poor people
on Marie Dressler.
Faun Fare
Surreptitious fanfare
of unadams
amingle with ouradams
a seemingly uniform guesthood
met in unsolemn sociability
the amiable scuffle
of cocktail party.
Hooveless fauns
their goat-haunch
discard to antiquity
their hairiness
woven to our worsted.
Most smiles are similes
some
almost imperceptibly
simper to mystery—
lidded with unlisted likings
on ocular trail
of invitation
to untypical trysts
As were the tail of the eye
feeling for fallacious Foci
a Flitting tongue
licking its luminous chops
o’er tit-bits of other tastes
undue
to the apple
the devil
delivered to Eve.
Neo-Fauns
Whom no forestal feminae
need flee
Altered is the prey.
Of priceless use to civilization
You faun
are balm
to night-club addict
undercover-virgin
for whom
Adonis as escort
—obliging her prestige
as cosmetics her cheek—
is a must.
Faun in you
may she trust
to stage no thrust
of Sabine rape
behind the chauffeur’s back
O unisex
Black marketing Amor
with your intermuscular caress
of wrestling entry
to Felicity’s
unsentinelled
Arcana.
Your something-for-nothing
Variance
to infertile “Sin.”
You
dual yet single
Votaries of Venuseros
As in Athens
So in Manhattan
Erosvenus evoes
his-her worshipper
or whispers
Eros is ours
for is not
Eros
forever overall
a male?
Or implores
for fauns’ ease.
Quiet please!
As mondial calliopes
Blaring the bisexual norm
foment the Fauns’
allergy to diapers.
Letters of the Unliving
The present implies presence
thus
unauthorized by the present
these letters are left authorless—
have lost all origin
since the inscribing hand
lost life — — —
The hoarseness of the past
creaks
from creased leaves
covered with unwritten writing
since death’s erasure
of the writer — — —
of the lover — — —
Well chosen and so ill-relinquished
the husband heartsease
acme of communion
who made euphonious
our esoteric universe
Ego’s oasis
in the sole companion.
As erst my body and my reason
you left to the drought of your dying:
the longing and the lack
when the racked creature
shouted
to an unanswering hiatus
“reunite us”
— — — till slyly — — soporose
patience creeps up on passion.
while the exhilarance of youth
dwindles until out of season
and agony
ends in an equal grave
with ecstasy.
An uneasy mist
rises from this calligraphy of recollection
your documented terror of dementia
due to some merely earthly absence
This package of ago
creaks with the horror of echo
out of void
the bloom of beloving
decoyed
to decay, by the finger
of Hazard the swindler
The deathly handler
left no post-mortem mask — — —
only a callous earth made mouldy
your face excelling Adonis
Posing the extreme enigma
in my Bewilderness
Can whom has ceased to be
Ever have had existence
No longer any you as addresser
there is no addressee
to dally with defunct reality
Can one who still has being
be inexistent?
I am become
dumb
in answer
to your dead language of amor
Diminuendo
of life’s imposture
implies no possible retrial
By my so now-while self
of my cloud-corpse
Beshadowing your shroud